Stress Alert!

Sorry to be leaving everyone hanging (I know you sit idly by Google Reader, waiting to hear more from me on this blog), but Alex and I have been busy entertaining Katrin and trying to arrange all the stuff associated with our trip out to DC (ride to airport, rental car, hotel, boarding B-cup, apartment viewings, job interviews- it's exhausting just listing all the things, not to mention mentally taxing even thinking about all the things on that list still to be crossed off!). I plan to post a nice entry this evening, showing all the fun things we did in the last week and chronicling our battles with the ever uncooperative weather in this wretched state. I just thought I would remind everyone I'm still here and that I still plan to contribute regularly to this bad boy, but that circumstances have prevented that from happening in the last seven days or so.

Which brings me to the title of this blog. Alex and I are stressing in a major way about finding housing that works with our situation. Our hunt is being complicated by several factors, including 1) accessibility to Georgetown is not optimal (to borrow a phrase from Tricia!) because no metro lines stop directly there, so locations even a little farther away inflate my commute like nobody's business; 2) even if we decided to live in Georgetown or surrounding neighborhoods, neither Alex nor myself are the children of Senators, ambassadors, or other officials who might be able to afford paying the rent rates found in this affluent little area of our nation's capital; 3) Alex's best job prospect at the moment is at Johns Hopkins, in Baltimore, which is about as far away from Georgetown as you can get and he's not really into the idea of driving for two hours each way just to get to work...he has been hearing from a lot of people in the NIH, which is in much more convenient Bethesda, but we don't want to be counting our chickens before they are hatched and Alex doesn't want to make a career decision based on convenience of commute; 4) even though she's like the cutest thing on earth, for some reason not everyone is warmed by the idea of taking in our adorable dog, Miss Buttercup; 5) since we have out-grown our small one bedroom apartment originally leased for single Alex and not equipped for me, Buttercup, and all of Alex's accumulated fishing accoutrements, we have been mentally compiling a wish list of all the features we want in a new place [second bedroom/den, DISHWASHER (since I am currently filling in for that appliance), washer/dryer in unit, a/c, etc.], which can be difficult to find on top of all of our other problems.

So, as you can see, Alex and I have gotten ourselves into a pickle, as only the two of us can do. Lately, I find myself often thinking of those wise words uttered by Bob Kelso: "Nothing that's worth having in life comes easy." Think good thoughts for us about finding something that tackles all these obstacles and stay tuned for a more fun blog about Katrin's visit :)